Google Data

Maps are useful for visualizing and sharing information about places around the world. For enterprises, Google Maps Engine has been providing businesses with professional tools to help them organize large datasets, make decisions, and give their customers important details about their locations and services.

Of course, experts aren’t the only ones who love to make maps. Today we’re launching Google Maps Engine Lite (Beta), so any mapping enthusiast can now create and share robust custom maps using this powerful, easy-to-use tool. You can import small spreadsheets of locations onto a comprehensive map, visualize those places through a variety of styling and drawing options, and organize and compare up to three different data sets for your non-business purposes.

Here are a few examples of maps that’ve been created with the new lite edition of Google Maps Engine.

The MAPA Project, a nonprofit dedicated to African conservation, used Maps Engine Lite to map the locations of “shark spotters” — trained observers who watch the water for sharks — along the False Bay coastline in South Africa. Spreadsheets of Shark Spotters locations and recent white shark sightings were both imported to create the map below. Learn more about how to recreate this map through this tutorial.

Here’s another close-to-home use of this advanced custom mapping tool. I enjoy checking out local hikes with my dog, Amos, so I created a map using trail heads from San Francisco Bay Area Hiker and information about the different pet requirements on each route. The resulting map also denotes which hikes require a leash, and is great for sharing with my friends and other dog-loving hikers in my community.

If you have already created My Maps, you can import your existing My Maps, layering them with still more information to make them more detailed and helpful than ever before. These My Maps will continue to be available for people who want to create simple custom maps, and will eventually be incorporated into Google Maps Engine Lite.

While there is plenty to play with today, Maps Engine Lite is still in beta and available in English only, and we are eager to learn more about how people use it as we continue to build out more capabilities for the Maps Engine products.

To try Google Maps Engine Lite for your own custom mapping needs, visit mapsengine.google.com/map.

For the past four years, Google has sponsored an initiative called Computer Science for High School (CS4HS). The mission of this aptly named collaboration is simple: to bring computer science professional development to educators through hands-on workshops. In collaboration with universities, colleges and technical schools, we have helped K-12 educators bring CS into their classrooms around the world; to date, we have helped train more than 6,000 teachers worldwide—from Canada to China, Germany to New Zealand, our programs reach more and more countries with every iteration.

Today, we are pleased to announce the recipients of the 5th annual CS4HS Google grant. (To see the full list, visit our site.) As our program grows, we are working to engage as many teachers as possible in our CS efforts. To that end, this year we are offering four free MOOC courses for educators who may not be physically close to one of our workshops, but who are eager to learn the basics of computer science. In addition, we are launching our new CS4HS Community page; join the conversation and help shape the next generation of computer scientists!

Posted by Erin Mindell, Program Manager, EngEDU

I use public transit to get around my city or to explore new ones when traveling. When on the go, I rely on Google Maps Transit to help me get to my destination using public transportation. We want to make sure you have access to the most comprehensive, accurate and useful information when you’re on the go – and that includes public transportation.

Starting today, you can view live departure times for seven lines on the New York City subway system (MTA), as well as for buses and trams in the greater Salt Lake City area (UTA). With these updates – part of the millions of live transit schedule updates we process every day – you get instant access to the latest information right on Google Maps, making trip planning a cinch.

Riders on the nation’s second largest subway, Metrorail in Washington, D.C., can now see live service alerts, including unplanned delays and scheduled track work, straight from Metro’s Control Center on Google Maps. To adjust your travel around the alerts you see, simply choose another suggested route or change your departure time.

With transit information in Google Maps you get pick-up locations, departure times, estimated travel time, and even fare amounts for 800 cities* across more than 25 countries around the world – that’s information for 100 million miles of daily public transit trips at your fingertips.

Download Google Maps on your Android device or iPhone to get public transit information on the go. And if you represent a transit agency that would like to participate in Google Maps, please visit our site for transit agency partners.

Posted by Soufi Esmaeilzadeh, Partnership Development Manager, Google Maps

*Live trip updates are available in select cities.

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Gabriel Ribenboim from Ritual, on behalf of Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS), a nonprofit organization implementing a large-scale social and environmental program in the Amazon. FAS was the recipient of a Google Earth Outreach Grant for Google Maps Engine, which they used to develop an accountability map for their investments in conservation and poverty alleviation. We are excited to showcase the Bolsa Floresta Platform. Our work with FAS is an example of how non-profits all over the world are using comprehensive, accurate and easy-to use Google Maps, Earth and geo tools to tell their story and help their audiences visualize their cause.

Since 2011, I’ve been working with the Brazilian nonprofit organization Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS) and Google to collect Street View for the Amazon. One FAS’s most significative initiatives is the administration of the Bolsa Floresta — Brazil’s first internationally-certified incentive program for the preservation of traditional communities and environment in the Amazon rainforest. As the largest payment for environmental services program in the world, Bolsa Floresta serves over 35,000 people, 15 state-protected reserve territories and covers an area of more than 10 million hectares.

Today, I’m excited to announce FAS’ latest project with Google: the Bolsa Floresta Platform – an online tool that allows you to explore and visualize a mix of social, environmental and economical map datasets for 15 protected areas in the Amazon.

Institutional transparency is a challenge for NGOs across the world. Tools that help track the impact of our efforts and present them in an accessible way are rare and normally require a significant investment. The Bolsa Floresta platform, built on Google technologies such as Google Maps Engine, Google Drive, YouTube and Street View helped us organize this kind of dataset in a way that is easy to visualize, understand and share with little in the way of programming complexity or investment.

Now, anyone can dive into the mapping visualizations of the State of Amazonas, navigate the rivers, forest, and communities through Google Street View imagery, or even browse 3D buildings inside protected areas. Most importantly, partners, government agencies and those who live within the benefited state-protected areas, can explore all kinds of informational map layers, enhancing institutional transparency, global awareness, exchange of sustainability practices and poverty alleviation solutions and improving internal planning capabilities.

The new platform is just one of the many ways FAS is using Google’s technologies to work towards a sustainable future on behalf of the communities of Brazil’s Amazon. Explore the map now or find out more about us at fas-amazonas.org.

Posted by Gabriel Ribenboim from Ritual, on behalf of Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS)

From cracking the human genome to advancing medical research through computer games, British social entrepreneurs have a proud history of using technology to make the world a better place.

Last year, we launched the Global Impact Awards to support nonprofits using technology to tackle some of the world’s toughest problems. We gave $23 million to seven organizations working on projects ranging from aerial technology that protects wildlife to data algorithms that ensure more girls and minorities get placed in advanced math and science classes.

Today, as the next step in the Impact Awards, we’re kicking off our first Global Impact Challenge in the U.K., inviting British nonprofits to tell us how they would use technology to transform lives. Four nonprofits will each receive a £500,000 Global Impact Award, as well as Chromebooks and technical assistance from Googlers to help make their project a reality.

Applications open today, and registered British nonprofits are invited to apply online at g.co/impactchallenge. We’ll review applications and announce 10 finalists on May 22. At that point, people across the U.K. can learn more about the projects of the top 10 finalists, donate to the ones they like and cast a vote for fan favorite. On June 3, the top 10 finalists will pitch their concepts to a judging panel that includes us (Matt Brittin and Jacquelline Fuller), Sir Richard Branson, Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Jilly Forster. The three awardees and the fan favorite will be revealed at the event, which will take place at Google London.

Technology can help solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges and we’re eager to back innovators who are finding new ways to make an impact. Today we’re starting the hunt in the U.K., but we also know that nonprofits all over the world are using techy approaches to develop new solutions in their sector. Who knows, the Global Impact Challenge might head your way next.

Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, director of Google Giving, and Matt Brittin, VP, sales and operations, Northern and Central Europe

From cracking the human genome to advancing medical research through computer games, British social entrepreneurs have a proud history of using technology to make the world a better place. Last year, we launched the Global Impact Awards to support nonp…

There are few places (if any) in the world where you could find urban art, zoomorphic whistles* and Hungarian poetry in a single place—except, of course, on the Internet.

Today 30 new partners are joining the Google Art Project, contributing nearly 2,000 diverse works including contemporary art from Latin America, ancient art from China, rare Japanese paintings and Palaeolithic flint heads from Spain.

One highlight of the new collection is a project to capture the growing trend of urban art and graffiti in Brazil. More than 100 works from walls, doors and galleries in São Paulo have been photographed and will be included in the Art Project. The pieces were chosen by a group of journalists, artists and graffiti experts and include artists such as Speto, Kobra and Space Invader, as well as images of São Paulo’s most famous building-size murals. You can see the contrast in styles in the Compare tool and image below.

Photography features strongly in the works our partners are bringing online this time around. The Fundacion MAPFRE in Spain showcases one of the largest collections with more than 300 photos from a number of renowned photographers. For example, you can explore Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide’s black and white images of indigenous Mexican culture inspired by themes of ritual, death and feminism.

The Art Project is also becoming a home to rare and precious items which move beyond paintings. Petőfi Literary Museum in Hungary has contributed the Nemzeti Dal or “National Song,” a Hungarian poem which is said to have been the inspiration for the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The original document has rarely been seen in public to prevent humidity and light fading the script further. Online now for the first time, it can be explored by anyone in the world.

With 40,000+ artworks to explore from more than 200 museums in more than 40 countries, we look forward to seeing these new works feature in hundreds of thousands of user galleries you have created to date. Keep an eye on our Google+ page for more details about the new collections.

*ceramic whistles in the shape of animals!

Posted by Shahina Rahman, Google Art Project

Every day we all see, hear or think of things we need to remember. Usually we grab a pad of sticky-notes, scribble a reminder and put it on the desk, the fridge or the relevant page of a magazine. Unfortunately, if you’re like me you probably often discover that the desk, fridge or magazine wasn’t such a clever place to leave the note after all…it’s rarely where you need it when you need it.

To solve this problem we’ve created Google Keep. With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.

If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it.

Changing priorities isn’t a problem: just open Keep on your Android phone or tablet (there’s a widget so you can have Keep front and center all the time) and drag your notes around to reflect what matters. You can choose the color for each note too.

Pro tip: for adding thoughts quickly without unlocking your device there’s a lock screen widget (on devices running Android 4.2+).

Google Keep is available on Google Play for devices running Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich and above. You can access, edit and create new notes on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and in the coming weeks you’ll be able to do the same directly from Google Drive.

Posted by Katherine Kuan, Software Engineer

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest author is Chris Kalluk, a resident of the Nunavut territory and mapping expert at Nunavut Tunngavik, the nonprofit organization we’re working with to collect imagery and build more comprehensive maps of the Canadian Arctic.

There’s a saying we have in the north: unless you’re the lead sled dog, the view is pretty much the same. Today, I’m wearing a Street View Trekker – a backpack outfitted with a camera system – and walking the streets of Iqaluit, ready to explore Canada’s incredible Arctic and putting you at the front of the pack.

Here, in the capital of Canada’s Arctic territory of Nunavut, the average temperature is below freezing eight months of the year. The roads are covered in snow, the bay is frozen and polar bear sightings are a frequent occurrence. Winter up here is a way of life. And the only way to truly understand it is to see it for yourself.

This is the first Trekker expedition in Canada for Google Maps. I’m wearing the backpack to collect Street View imagery as I walk to the shore of Frobisher Bay, where the wind is the strongest and you can see the tide piling up mountains of sea ice. On the way I’ll pass sled dogs tied up outside houses, yapping in anticipation of their next trip. And I may stop to check out an igloo, built by Inuit craftsmen using methods passed down over a millennia.

As part of its commitment to build a comprehensive and accurate map of Canada’s north, Google visited my home, Cambridge Bay, last August and published imagery of the trip that fall. But this visit to Iqaluit marks the first time the Google Maps team has ventured into an Arctic climate during the winter months, where average temperatures can dip below -30°C [-25°F].

At the end of the day, when it’s time to warm up, our community will gather around two dozen computers at the local library to conduct a MapUp workshop. I’ll work with Iqaluit’s elders, local business owners, political leaders and high school students to show them how we can use Google Map Maker to add the streets, shops and points of interest – those places that make Iqaluit home – to Google Maps.

Hiking Iqaluit with the Trekker and working as a community to make the map more complete offers us a unique opportunity to share our people’s land and culture with the rest of the world. And, in just a few months, when the Street View panoramas become available on Google Maps, you’ll have a chance to virtually walk these snowy streets for yourself.

I like to think of it as our chance to give you the lead sled dog’s view.

Chris Kalluk, GIS and mapping expert with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc

Last month, the Web Speech API brought voice recognition to Chrome users in more than 30 languages. We thought it would be fun to demonstrate this new technology by using an old one: silent film.

The Peanut Gallery lets you add intertitles to old black-and-white movie clips just by talking out loud while you watch them. Create a film and share it with friends, so they can bring out their inner screenwriters too.

We hope that developers will find many uses for the Web Speech API, both fun and practical—including new ways to navigate, search, enter text, and interact with the web. We can’t wait to see how people use it.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Creative Lab

(Cross-posted from the Chrome blog)

Most of us have a bucket list of the places we want to visit in our lifetime. If you’re like me, the list is pretty long—to be honest I’d be lucky to get to all of mine. Google Maps has a bucket list too, and today we’re checking off a couple of our favorites so we can make our map more comprehensive and share it with you. And if tall mountains are your thing, you’re in luck.

Now you can explore some of the most famous mountains on Earth, including Aconcagua (South America), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Mount Elbrus (Europe) and Everest Base Camp (Asia) on Google Maps. These mountains belong to the group of peaks known as the Seven Summits—the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. While there’s nothing quite like standing on the mountain, with Google Maps you can instantly transport yourself to the top of these peaks and enjoy the sights without all of the avalanches, rock slides, crevasses, and dangers from altitude and weather that mountaineers face.

Start your adventure on Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro, the dormant volcano known as the Roof of Africa. See amazing views of the highest freestanding mountain in the world covered in snow just three degrees south of the equator.

Next, travel to the tallest mountain in Europe, Russia’s Mount Elbrus, and see huts made from Soviet-era fuel barrels. Climbers have to take refuge in the huts built on the mountain when the weather turns wretched.

Explore Argentina’s mighty Aconcagua, the highest peak in both the Western and Southern Hemispheres. See how a base camp is set up amongst the exposed rock in Plaza Argentina and how expeditions eat, camp and prepare for their ascent.

Finally, make your way to Everest Base Camp, where expeditions stage their attempts to reach the top of the world. Along the ascent, steal glimpses of the snow-capped Himalayan mountain peaks and the awesome Khumbu glacier.

This imagery was collected with a simple lightweight tripod and digital camera with a fisheye lens—equipment typically used for our Business Photos program. See the slideshow below and our Lat Long Blog for a behind-the-scenes look at the regular Googlers that actually climbed these mountains to capture this stunning photography.

Whether you’re scoping out the mountain for your next big adventure or exploring it from the comfort and warmth of your home, we hope you enjoy these views from the top of the world. See more of our favorite shots on the Street View Gallery. We’ll also be hosting a Hangout on Air today at 10:00 am PT where we’ll share stories from our expeditions and answer questions about this special collection.

Posted by Dan Fredinburg, Google adventurer, on behalf of entire expedition team

Today, we released photos of the some of the most famous mountains in the world on Google Maps. I was lucky to be part of the team that traveled around the world to capture the imagery and experience the mountains first-hand.

I’ve always had a sense of adventure. In 2011, when my colleague asked if I wanted to go on a trip to Everest Base Camp, I couldn’t resist, and we recruited a group of Googlers and fellow explorers to join us. Then we learned we could capture imagery of our trip for Google Maps with a tripod and a digital camera. We had plenty of room in our packs, so we loaded up our cameras and mountaineering gear, and hopped on a plane to Nepal.

Buddhist mantras outside the town of Lukla

Day 2: Today we arrived at Namche Bazaar — “the gateway to the high Himalaya.” It’s a good-sized town with lots of hotels, shops and a pharmacy. Many hikers stop here for altitude acclimatization on their way to Everest. During our stay there was a 6.9 earthquake! It was scary, especially when we realized we were in a developing country that doesn’t have infrastructure or emergency services like back home in California. We were fortunate that there was very little damage where we were.

Day 3: We woke up to a clear morning. The mountains were absolutely spectacular! We spent the day taking pictures of the town with our Street View cameras and meticulously taking notes on a map so we could remember what we were capturing once we were back at sea level. Everyone, including me, is starting to feel the effects of the altitude (mostly nausea and headaches), and we’re barely above 11,000 ft.

Googlers Sara Pelosi and Andrew Swerdlow with Ama Dablam looming in the distance

Day 4: The morning was a pretty easy walk, mostly traversing the mountain ridges. After we stopped for tea there was a long climb, “up up up” according to our guide, all on switchbacks. We stopped in Tengboche for lunch, then photographed the monastery with the fisheye lens. Amazing place. The monks watched us closely as we walked around. I don’t know if they were more interested in the Americans or the photography. We continued on to Pangboche where we stayed for the night. When we got to Pangboche we saw a patch of blue sky and a rainbow. I’m still optimistic that we’ll see at least a glimpse of the peak of Everest. Our guide says, “can be”, which we’ve learned is the answer to every question. We’re not even quite to 13,000 ft here. A long way left to go up.

Day 8: We left early in the morning and hiked for about three hours until we reached a small village called Gorak Shep. The hike was flat along a river for several hours, then turned into a very steep climb. When we arrived at Base Camp, it was the most amazing feeling of accomplishment. We had finally made it to the base of the top of the world! We wouldn’t have gotten here without our expert guide and porters who know the mountains like the back of their hand and were essential to the success and safety of our trip. I barely stopped to enjoy the moment before wanting to accomplish the next goal – photographing the Base Camp where a real summit expedition had actually set up camp.

Posted by Sara Pelosi, People Programs Manager, on behalf of entire expedition team

Today marks the debut of the new Think Insights, Google’s hub for marketing insights and inspiration for advertisers and agencies. On google.com/think, you can learn about the latest research in digital marketing, be inspired by creative brand campaigns, and find useful products and tools. You’ll also find industry-leading case studies and Google’s latest research, strategic perspectives, interviews with innovators and experts and more—all to help you make the most of the web.

Every week, we’ll feature content that spans industries and interests. Here’s a snapshot of our top stories:

• In Understanding the Full Value of Mobile, learn how sporting goods industry leader adidas worked with digital performance agency iProspect to understand how mobile drives value beyond mobile commerce, particularly in-store sales. The campaign proved that mobile brought a 680% incremental increase in ROI.
• The Hyundai Elantra: Driveway Decision Maker campaign lets you watch your favorite Hyundai model drive right to your driveway, using a combination of Google Maps Street View, projection mapping and real-time 3D animation.
• YouTube Ads Leaderboard shows which YouTube ads most moved audiences this month, through a winning combination of savvy promotion and smart creative strategy; a new list is featured each month.

In our Perspectives section, we tap our own experts—as well as heads of industry, digital visionaries and Wharton professors—to lend their insights and analyses on the topics that matter most to marketers. The Product & Tools section contains information about our products and advertising platforms, as well as Planning Tools like the popular Real-Time Insights finder.

We built google.com/think to help you do it all—stay up-to-date on the latest in digital marketing, arm yourself with data to support your business cases and create inspiring campaigns. Explore the site now, and if you like what you discover, don’t forget to subscribe to our Think Letter for a monthly round-up of our most popular content.

Posted by Lisa Gevelber, Head of Global Ads Marketing

For decades, the World War II codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park was one of the U.K.’s most closely guarded secrets. Today, it’s a poignant place to visit and reflect on the achievements of those who worked there. Their outstanding feats of intellect, coupled with breakthrough engineering and dogged determination, were crucial to the Allied victory—and in parallel, helped kickstart the computing age.

We’ve long been keen to help preserve and promote the importance of Bletchley Park. Today we’re announcing two new initiatives that we hope will bring its story to a wider online audience.

First, we’re welcoming the Bletchley Park Trust as the latest partner to join Google’s Cultural Institute. Their digital exhibit features material from Bletchley’s archives, providing a vivid snapshot of the work that went on cracking secret messages and the role this played in shortening the war. Included are images of the Bombe machines that helped crack the Enigma code; and of Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, used to crack the German High Command code—including this message showing the Germans had been successfully duped about the location for the D-Day invasion.

Second, as a followup to our film about Colossus, we’re pleased to share a personal story of the Bombe, as told by one of its original operators, Jean Valentine. Women like Jean made up the majority of Bletchley Park’s personnel—ranging from cryptographers, to machine operators, to clerks. In her role operating the Bombe, Jean directly helped to decipher messages encoded by Enigma. In this film Jean gives us a firsthand account of life at Bletchley Park during the war, and demonstrates how the Bombe worked using a replica machine now on show at the museum.

We hope you enjoy learning more about Bletchley Park and its fundamental wartime role and legacy. For more glimpses of history, explore the Cultural Institute’s other exhibitions on www.google.com/culturalinstitute.

Posted by Marzia Niccolai, Technical Program Manager, Google Cultural Institute

We’re living in a new kind of computing environment. Everyone has a device, sometimes multiple devices. It’s been a long time since we have had this rate of change—it probably hasn’t happened since the birth of personal computing 40 years ago. To make the most of these opportunities, we need to focus—otherwise we spread ourselves too thin and lack impact. So today we’re announcing some more closures, bringing the total to 70 features or services closed since our spring cleaning began in 2011:

• Apps Script will be deprecating the GUI Builder and five UiApp widgets in order to focus efforts on Html Service. The rest of the Ui Service will not be affected. The GUI Builder will continue to be available until September 16, 2013. For more information see our post on the Google Apps Developer Blog.
• CalDAV API will become available for whitelisted developers, and will be shut down for other developers on September 16, 2013. Most developers’ use cases are handled well by Google Calendar API, which we recommend using instead. If you’re a developer and the Calendar API won’t work for you, please fill out this form to tell us about your use case and request access to whitelisted-only CalDAV API.
• Google Building Maker helped people to make three-dimensional building models for Google Earth and Maps. It will be retired on June 1, but users are still able to access and export their models from the 3D Warehouse. We’ll continue to expand the availability of comprehensive and accurate new 3D imagery on Google Earth, and people can still use Google Map Maker to add building information such as outlines and heights to Google Maps.
• Google Cloud Connect is a plug-in to help people work in the cloud by automatically saving Microsoft Office files from Windows PCs in Google Drive. But installing Google Drive on your desktop achieves the same thing more effectively—and Drive works not only on Windows, but also on Mac, Android and iOS devices. Existing users will no longer be able to use Cloud Connect as of April 30.
• We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.
• Beginning next week, we’re ending support for the Google Voice App for Blackberry. For Blackberry users who want to continue using Google Voice, we recommend they use our HTML5 app, which is more secure and easier for us to keep up to date. Our HTML5 site is compatible with users with Blackberry version 6 and newer.
• We’re deprecating our Search API for Shopping, which has enabled developers to create shopping apps based on Google’s Product Search data. While we believe in the value this offering provided, we’re shifting our focus to concentrate on creating a better shopping experience for users through Google Shopping. We’ll shut the API down completely on September 16, 2013.
• Beginning today we’ll no longer sell or provide updates for Snapseed Desktop for Macintosh and Windows. Existing customers will continue to be able to download the software and can contact us for support. We’ll continue to offer the Snapseed mobile app on iOS and Android for free.

These changes are never easy. But by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on building great products that really help in their lives.

Update March 15, 2013: We worked with the developers who provide 98 percent of our current CalDAV traffic to assure access to the CalDAV API, which means many popular products will not be impacted. We remain committed to supporting open protocols like CalDAV.

Posted by Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow